Lack of Efficiency

Okay, it's honesty time. You don't need to tell me obviously, but think about it. How many times have you logged on to some media outlet during the first few rounds of the NCAA tournament when you should have been working? Last year, I wasted quite a bit of time following the NCAA tournament when I could have been effectively using study hall in the library. However, we all know that libraries aren't meant to study; obviously, libraries were meant to provide computers to follow basketball games. Well, myself and I bet many of you, are not alone in succumbing to the temptation of midday basketball. According to a new study I read about in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the first week of the NCAA tournament could possibly cost employers $1.8 billion. Obviously, this is a significant chunk of money that employers are losing out on because of a leisure activity. One factor that I didn't realize was that when you watch the games on the CBS webcast, they have a "Boss Button" that pops up a fake spreadsheet that would supposedly hide your activities from your boss. While this is meant to make fun of the trend of employees, it is a sad commentary that this button was hit almost 2.8 million times last year.

Some companies are taking steps to combat this loss of productivity. They install "big brother" type software would then allow them to track all employee Internet activity. My question would be: how expensive is this monitoring service? If employers on the whole spend more than $1.8 billion on this service just for one week, obviously it would not be worth it. Therefore, I do not think that this service is really worth it. I do not think that the money that this would save would be worth it. The added staff morale would lead to higher future productivity which I would assume would generate more revenue than the original one week period. Also, I think about some of the best employers to work for who offer employees everything from gym memberships to haircuts according to Fortune. Why would they be offering all of these incentives if employees were not better off by doing them? Allowing employees to waste a few hours out of the entire year apparently would perhaps increase worker productivity and therefore make the NCAA tournament a blessing rather than a waste of time and money.

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